Category: 2014

A Lakota-Dakota-speaking Berenstain Bears cartoon is the kid magnet at the new Innovation Gallery at the State Historical Society of North Dakota. The Gallery is one of four new galleries built in the Society’s newly expanded Heritage Center educational museum space.

You can see that children hear the language on the telephone handsets while seeing the animated cartoon action and reading the English translation off to the side. The cartoon is “Homework Hassle,” dubbed into Lakota-Dakota for the 2011 PBS series Matȟó Waúŋšila Thiwáhe, produced by the Lakota Language Consortium as part of their mission to promote the language to the wider public.

Chris Johnson, Museum Division Director at the Society, told us how the cartoon — and the region’s many indigenous languages – all fit into the Innovation Gallery’s educational intent.

“When we were designing this exhibit, we went out to the five reservations in North Dakota, and talked with people about what we hoped to do in the gallery,” Johnson said. The two galleries now open – Adaptation and Innovation – look at two different stages of North Dakota history: Adaptation is pre-human, ie. dinosaur fossils and geologic record until the end of the last Ice Age 13,000 years ago, and Innovation shows the development of human societies from the end of the Ice Age until 1860.

“We took public feedback and had a team of advisors from each reservation,” Johnson said. “What came back in comments was the importance of presenting the tribal language – whether in New Town, Spirit Lake, Standing Rock, or wherever, it was a universal comment.  So we made sure we worked languages in wherever we could.”

The Innovation Gallery exhibit incorporates Plains sign language as intertribal communications, and winter counts to show how the Plains peoples recorded their long-term history.  However, Johnson says, the exhibit designers also wanted to talk about “how contemporary tribes today are working to either preserve or revive languages, and how for a language to be viable is it has to be current, relevant to today’s world.  So we thought the Lakota Berenstain Bears cartoon would show how to take a language some would think was from the past, and make it relevant today.”

Johnson contacted LLC for permission to use the cartoon.  How could we say no?

Johnson admitted that the Society sought an easy way to get past the closeness of “Lakota” and “Dakota” languages – so they just used “Dakota” as a universal term for the tribes speaking those related tongues.

There are other uses of regional languages significant to the Innovation Gallery.  Each section of the Gallery has a panel to introduce the section’s theme with a quote from one of the languages, printed in English but with a push-button audio option that lets the visitor hear the quote spoken in that language. The section on the history of horses in the Plains region is introduced in Lakota.

The Lakota-language play, Iktómi Lečhála Tȟawíčutȟuŋ (Iktomi’s New Wife) has its premiere tonight at 7 pm at the Standing Rock High School Auditorium, 9819 Highway 24 in Fort Yates.  Admission is FREE.

Blaze Starkey and Peter Hill practice being Meadowlarks

It’s based on two Iktomi stories, one of which is well-known: “Iktomi’s Blanket.” That story was collected in Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Ša, published in 1901.

The other is “Iktomi and the Ignorant Girl.”  This was collected by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz in the book American Indian Myths and Legends, published in 1984, and the story is recounted as one from the “Brule Sioux” people.

Picture this: two oral-tradition stories were written down in English, then adapted in English to be one story for the theater. Then that story was translated into Lakota by the actors – and back into English for supertitles projected for the audience!

Iktómi Lečhála Tȟawíčutȟuŋ (Iktomi’s New Wife) has its first performance on Thursday night, June 19, at 7 pm, at the Standing Rock High School Auditorium: 9189 Highway 24, Fort Yates, ND, Standing Rock. The Director is Steve Elm (Oneida), a professional actor-writer-director based in New York and Virginia.

Admission is FREE, so come on down and bring your friends!

After this excitement on Friday …

… more visitors from Washington, DC arrived on  Saturday …

… to talk about Native American language preservation.

Dignitaries meeting at Sitting Bull College included US Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, William Mendoza (Executive Director of the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education ), Sedelta Oosahwee (Associate Director of WHIAIANE)  and Ron Lessard (Chief of Staff at WHIAIANE).

Welcoming them were Sitting Bull President Dr. Laurel Vermillion, Sitting Bull’s VP of Academics Koreen Ressler, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairman Dave Archambault, SRST Education Manager Sunshine Carlow, joined by LLC Staff Wil Meya, Jan Ullrich and Kim Campbell, as well as many Lakota Native speakers and teachers.

 

During Week 2 of LSI, the schedule was stretched to “start early, end late,” in order to accommodate the special event that fell in our laps: a visit by the President of the United States and First Lady to the Summer Powwow at Cannon Ball, ND, on the Standing Rock reservation, less than an hour north of Fort Yates and Sitting Bull College.

The visit, which happened Friday, June 13, drew Standing Rock tribe members away from the Sitting Bull College campus for the entire day.  We’ll have a report on the day soon – as there was a significant event for Native languages on Saturday, June 14, in the backwash of that visit.

The second week of LSI saw a return to a strong focus on the Lakota language, after the friendly welcome given to the MHA Nation and Crow Nation Summer Institutes getting their start.

Dr. Lanny Real Bird of the Crow nation stayed on, and taught his course on Plains Sign Language.

Junior Garcia stayed on, too, after leading classes last week on Teaching Methods for the Crow Level 1 textbooks.  In Week 2 he led Teaching Methods for Lakota Levels 1 and 2 textbooks.

Longtime LSI Instructor Kim Campbell presented on Teaching Methods for Lakota Levels 3 and 4 textbooks.

LLC Linguistic Director Jan Ullrich continued teaching Lakota Grammar and language Intensives.

Peter Hill and Anpao Duta Flying Earth also taught language Intensives.

The dynamic energy of LSI is something you can feel in the halls at SBC, says LLC Executive Director Wil Meya. “People’s brains are so full, there’s so much learning happening,” he said. “We turn the whole place upside down, the place is full of movement and voices. This year was especially electric with all the younger people joining in – LSI is building a vital group of language activists, and gathering new activists on board.”

And then this happened:

And this, on Saturday:

William Mendoza (Oglala – Sicangu Lakota), the Executive Director of the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education, and Ron Lessard (Mohawk – Abenaki), Strategic Advisor for Native American Affairs, were at Sitting Bull College on Saturday to join a roundtable of tribal leaders, students, educators, higher education officials and others to discuss successes and challenges in language preservation.

More on this, coming soon.

Oneida Native Steve Elm doesn’t speak Lakota – but that doesn’t stop him from having a blast at the Lakota Summer Institute!

Steve is a polished theater pro from New York City who has worked with renowned Native American theater companies and artists, writing, directing and performing in original works.  His work helping school kids create their own emotionally powerful theater pieces – and training teachers on how to use theater skills in their classrooms – brought him to LSI to direct the new Iktomi play, Iktómi Lečhála Tȟawíčutȟuŋ (Iktomi’s New Wife).

We caught up with Steve on June 11, halfway through the three-week rehearsal process.

“Today was the first day we had the full cast, and we started rehearsing in Lakota today,” Steve said.  “I have no speaking knowledge of Lakota, but fortunately the three lead actors – Iktomi, his Wife, and the Ignorant Girl – are all strong. We worked in English last week, playing around and working out the dramatic objectives” of the story, he said, while “rewriting and restructuring” to accommodate the number of people who would be in the cast.

The script blends two traditional Iktomi tales: “Iktomi’s Blanket” and “Iktomi and the Ignorant Girl.” The stage story is that Iktomi and his old Wife have had yet another fight, and Iktomi is determined to find a new, young wife.  Naturally, Iktomi’s deceit blows back on him.

“We started translating the script yesterday,” Steve said, which meant changing the dialogue. “Lakota has different ways of saying things, and different meanings,” Steve explained, “which changed the jokes.”

Working with non-professional actors to develop their own expression in their own language is a challenge for Steve, but an intriguing challenge. A big part of the story hinges on the differences between how Lakota men speak, and how the women speak. In traditional times, the two genders were kept strictly separated, so that each came to say certain words and sentences in their own way.

“To me it’s like directing a play, only I don’t know the words,” he said. “What I do know is the feeling of the objectives behind the actors.  Even with supertitles [translations projected above the stage], the audience should have a good idea of what’s happening.”

Iktómi Lečhála Tȟawíčutȟuŋ (Iktomi’s New Wife) will be performed on Thursday, June 19, at 7 pm at the Standing Rock High School Auditorium, 9189 Highway 24, Fort Yates, ND.  Admission is free.

While still abuzz with LSI classes and anticipation of President Obama’s visit on Friday, the Sitting Bull College campus is a bit quieter this week.

The MHA and Crow Nations have finished their first Summer Institutes, initiating language education and revitalization programs based on carefully planned K-12 curricula and proven second-language education methods.

The MHASI and CSI co-located with LSI at Sitting Bull to breathe in the atmosphere of dynamic, “can-do” enthusiasm for learning and teaching Native American languages.

The Crow and MHA Nations were formally welcomed and acknowledged in the Lakota Summer Institute opening ceremony last Monday, which established an atmosphere of respect and safety, as well as hope, energy and enthusiasm.

The MHASI will relocate to Fort Berthold Community College in Fort Berthold, ND next year.

Lakota teacher Albino Junior Garcia came to both MHASI and the Crow Summer Institute to coach Crow and MHA teachers in Total Physical Response and the use of flashcards with their Level 1 textbooks.  He has taught Special Projects and Teaching Lakota Methods at the Lakota Summer Institute since 2012 and taught Teaching Crow Level 1 in 2013.

Armik Mirzayan came over from the Lakota Summer Institute to teach Arikara Phonology at MHASI as well.

Many of the second-language speakers and students at LSI are parents of young children, and they are determined to pass the Lakota language on.  One of these is Denny Gayton, of Standing Rock.

Denny told us he has brought his two children with him to LSI this year, because “I want them to have the passion, to grow in the language.  They want to learn it, but they have not had the environment – except at our house – where people are excited about it or even meaningfully encouraging about it.”

What he sees happening at LSI is something very powerful: “Here, people are excited and free,” he said, “using the language, talking and not afraid to make mistakes.  They either self-correct or someone will offer a correction for them to use.”

As an enthusiastic second-language student, Denny taught an evening class himself at last year’s LSI.  “This year I’m taking all of the same classes again – Teaching Methods in the morning and Intensive for Intermediates in the afternoon – so I can have fun with the language.”

For even more fun, Denny is helping LLC with an experiment – Lakota translations of these updates.  Watch for those!

Week Two! Section Two! Here we go again …

Coming up this week, Teaching Lakota/Dakota II, more Language Intensives, and the return of Northern Plains Sign Language, with Dr. Lanny Real Bird of the Crow Nation. Dr. Real Bird brings back instruction in nearly 200 hand signs that were the common language between many, many tribes in the pre-reservation era.

It seems that language itself is bringing together Northern Plains tribes these days. With the emergence of language education and revitalization efforts in the Crow, MHA and other Plains nations, one can see the rising point of view that all tribes are in the same situation when it comes to their languages: it’s time to start learning, so that they won’t be lost.

The MHA and Crow Nations finished their first Summer Institutes on Friday, inaugurating language education and revitalization programs based on carefully planned K-12 curricula and proven second-language education methods.  The MHASI will relocate to Fort Berthold Community College in 2015. Their kickoff at Sitting Bull College, coinciding with LSI, was facilitated by the Language Conservancy,  with support from Sitting Bull and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

The Crow and MHA Nations were formally welcomed and acknowledged in the Lakota Summer Institute opening ceremony last Monday, which established an atmosphere of respect and safety, as well as what LLC Executive Director Will Meya said was “hope, energy and enthusiasm that is really contagious.” Both Nations’ Institutes provided the attending teachers with brand-new Level 1 textbooks that sparked a leap in energy and focus.

Meya noted that it can get very lonely for severely endangered languages like Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, whose teachers and remaining speakers have done their best to keep the languages available to the tribes.  Inclusion in a large, positive crowd of teachers and staff at Sitting Bull “was so new, and unlike what they’re used to, they could see right away why it’s so important to come down” to Fort Yates, Meya said.  The opportunity to dive deep into language study and practice was unusual and appreciated, he said.

#LSI2014 #SittingBullCollege #StandingRockSiouxTribe #EndangeredLanguages #LakotaLanguage

The energy of the young people at LSI keeps the elders on their toes!

It’s clear the long, hard work of the elders has paved the way for this wave of younger students …

…  and the elders’ enthusiasm keeps them moving forward.

Today, Friday, is the end of Section 1 for the intensive language study classes.  And that means tests!

Next Friday, of course, is going to be something special! Everyone is supercharged about the news of President Obama’s visit to the powwow on Standing Rock on June 13th. Classes will let out early so everyone can go welcome him and the First Lady. https://youtu.be/gK1dr0ylvwE

Until then – more learning!  It’s a real workout.

The Lakota Summer Institute and Lakota Language Consortium are proud to announce distinguished theater professional Steve Elm will direct a new play this summer as the culmination of the annual Lakota Summer Institute – a play that will be performed entirely in the Lakota language.

“Language, to me, is the key to theater,” says Steve Elm, who is the former Artistic Director of Amerinda Theater in New York City, and former Editor of the literary journal Talking Stick Native Quarterly. “I became an actor when I learned to love language.  I became a writer because I wanted to create language. I became a director so that I may translate language.”

Elm, who is Oneida, faces a language challenge this summer that is different from anything he’s ever done before: directing Lakota language teachers – non-actors — in Lakota, a language Elm does not speak.

Iktómi Lečhála Tȟawíčutȟuŋ (Iktomi’s New Wife) is a stage adaptation of two Lakota-Dakota tales about the trickster Iktomi: “Iktomi and the Ignorant Girl” and “Iktomi’s Blanket.” In the play, Iktomi has another fight with his old wife and he is determined to get a new one – and he will put on a dress to do it.

The language teachers who will rehearse and perform the play under Elm’s direction are fluent and proficient Lakota speakers from tribal school systems in North and South Dakota, as well as advanced language students. They are co-creating this production with improvisation and music under Elm’s guidance, while attending a special three-week class at LSI, Lakota Drama and Performance.

Other tribal colleges in the region, most notably Oglala Lakota College, have theater and drama courses to express Lakota identity with the language, but the LSI class intends to help Lakota language teachers build theater skills for use in their classrooms, to make learning and speaking Lakota exciting and fun.

Elm comes to the production with a background in professional acting, directing and playwriting, as well as educational theater development and teacher training. Trained at London’s Rose Bruford College and with professional credits in London and Manchester, Elm has performed and directed extensively for original Native American productions as part of festivals and for established Native American performance companies. With Gloria Miguel of Spiderwoman Theater, he co wrote her solo piece, Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, which he directed at New York Theater Workshop La Mama, ETC., and the Freed Center in Ada, Ohio.

“I have a passion for working with young people and non-professionals,” he says. “In the 1990’s I directed the New York City based American Indian Community House Youth Theater Project. There, a company of young Natives collaborated through improvisation, games, storytelling and discussion to create theater that resonated with their lives and had a profound effect on the community and served to educate and familiarize non-Natives with contemporary Indian youth. The plays were often raucous, often musical, usually funny, and always poignant. Most importantly, the plays were created by the young people themselves. My role was to guide, facilitate, and stage.

“I worked for many years with the Creative Arts Team at City University of New York, where I specialized in creating drama in education; again, focusing on the issues and concerns of young people. These theater experiences provided a forum in which the participants interacted with the performers by taking roles in scenes, suggesting different ways in which characters could behave, commenting and discussing the action. The line between performers and students was erased; thus providing deeply student centered learning, as well as offering those involved a chance to be immersed in theater and drama.”

Currently, he is a freelance director and a Master Teacher at the Wolf Trap Institute for the Performing Arts, working with early learners and training teachers in drama and storytelling.  In September Steve will join the New School of Northern Virginia as Director of Theater.

Elm sees the opportunity to work with Lakota language teachers, who will be acting in a language he doesn’t understand, “an honor and a challenge.”